Site Navigation

Site Mobile Navigation

Harry Who?

Boys love action heroes. Entertainers from Homer on have known how to enthrall the barely bearded with tales of derring-do, whether their chase scenes are powered by wind, oats or rocket fuel. Two new adventure stories cleverly draw on great examples of this tradition: the Greek myths, which gave us the word "hero," and the Arthurian legends, which celebrated honor equally with courage. Both follow a more recent model - Harry Potter - in taking as the hero an ordinary boy who at first seems set apart from his peers, not by any special talent but by his painful home life and his difficulties fitting in.

Percy (for Perseus) Jackson, the narrator of "The Lightning Thief," lives with his mother and abusive stepfather, the aptly named Gabe Ugliano. He never knew his real father. A troubled student teetering on the brink of special ed, he suffers from dyslexia and A.D.H.D. - or at least, that's what his guidance counselors have always told him. But after his pre-algebra teacher turns into a harpy and tries to kill him, his mother risks her life taking him to a summer camp where she hopes he'll be safe. There he finds out just how special he really is.

"The letters float off the page when you read, right? That's because your mind is hard-wired for ancient Greek," explains a fellow camper, gray-eyed Annabeth. "And the A.D.H.D. - you're impulsive, can't sit still in the classroom. That's your battlefield reflexes. In a real fight, they'd keep you alive. As for the attention problems, that's because you see too much, Percy, not too little. Your senses are better than a regular mortal's. . . . Face it. You're a half blood."

So is Annabeth: her mother is the goddess Athena.

The Greek gods didn't die just because people stopped believing in them, Chiron, a counselor at the camp, tells Percy. (Yes, that's the Chiron, the centaur who taught Hercules.) They couldn't - they're immortal. Alive and as irritable as ever, they storm and quarrel, especially over the children they're forever having with mortals. And these days it's just as dangerous to be a demigod as it was in the days of ancient Greece, when jealous immortals would target their spouses' mortal children or angry uncles would take out family differences on their weakest relatives.

As one of those half-human heroes, Percy must master his powers, learn his true parentage, triumph over his enemies and avert an Olympian battle that threatens to overwhelm the earth. That may sound like a tall order for a middle schooler, but Percy's up to it. After all, this is the boy who strangled a snake that slipped into his cot during naptime in preschool.

"The Lightning Thief" is perfectly paced, with electrifying moments chasing each other like heartbeats, and mysteries opening out in sequence. The action never feels gratuitous; it draws its depth from the myths at its source. "If you were a god," Chiron asks, "how would you like being called a myth, an old story to explain lightning? What if I told you, Perseus Jackson, that someday people would call you a myth, just created to explain how little boys can get over losing their mothers?"

Yet the old stories do explain lightning; similarly, "The Lightning Thief" creates a model of a boy who gets over losing his mother and transforms his limitations into powers. Many readers will find parallels between the quarrels of the gods and those of the adults around them. What child hasn't felt at the mercy of mighty, unpredictable beings?

If Riordan were any less inventive, the symbols might seem heavy-handed. When Percy first meets Chiron, for example, the centaur is disguised as a Latin teacher who uses a wheelchair; when Percy learns his true nature, the wheelchair metamorphoses, revealing a horse's body in a cage. But Riordan's sense of humor rescues the book from didacticism. With 15 years' experience teaching middle school, he understands what his readers will find funny.

When Percy's best friend, Grover, reveals that he's a satyr, Percy finally gets why Grover has such a bleating laugh. When Grover is struck by lightning in one particularly dramatic chase scene, Percy tells us: "I shook his furry hip, thinking, No! Even if you are half barnyard animal, you're my best friend and I don't want you to die! Then he groaned 'Food,' and I knew there was hope." Grover later asks, "If you're not going to eat it, could I have your Diet Coke can?"

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

He finds himself in the path of the Minotaur, who's "seven feet tall, easy . . . bulging biceps and triceps and a bunch of other 'ceps, all stuffed like baseballs under vein-webbed skin," and wearing nothing but bright white Fruit of the Looms. When the half-dressed half man, half bull charges at Grover, Percy distracts him by waving his red raincoat and shouting: "Hey! . . . Hey, stupid! Ground beef!"

Though Riordan tosses off myths on every page, transforming them into contemporary episodes with magic worthy of Ovid, he has plenty left for what I hope will be a long series.

Like "The Lightning Thief," "The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp" has an unlikely hero - which is getting to be the likeliest kind. "I studied hard for my driver's test, but I flunked it. So I took it a second time and flunked again, but I didn't miss as many questions, so at least I was improving as a failure. Uncle Farrell pointed to my scores as proof I lacked the guts to achieve even something as simple as a learner's permit," the action begins, introducing a whole raft of themes: Alfred's perception of himself as a loser, his discouraging home life, his stubborn determination and, of course, cars.

As a knight descended from one of King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table tells him: "Who can say what valor dwells in the soul unless the test comes? A hero lives in every heart, Alfred, waiting for the dragon to come out." The boy who couldn't get his learner's permit is soon racing north from Florida to Canada in a Mercedes, a Ferrari Enzo, a stolen police cruiser (a Crown Victoria), a Jaguar, a Chevy Suburban, a helicopter and a horse, switching vehicles whenever the one he's in smashes up, a nose ahead of bad guys riding (among other things) Suzuki Hayabusas and helicopters.

A ction adventures are always better with a MacGuffin. In "The Lightning Thief," Percy and his friends have to recover Zeus' stolen lightning bolt before the gods start a war over it. In "Alfred Kropp," the stolen item is Excalibur, King Arthur's magical sword, the most powerful weapon ever known. Its wielder cannot be defeated, which presents a problem to Alfred and his allies, the descendants of the knights of Camelot, sworn to protect the sword.

To make matters worse, Alfred's the one who stole the sword and handed it over to the bad guys - before he knew they were the bad guys. That he was able to take it should give readers familiar with the Arthurian legends a hint about his mysterious paternity.

Unlike "The Lightning Thief," though, "The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp" draws little of its energy from its source myths. Yancey's knights lack the melancholy poetry of their ancestors; they seem like something out of a video game, or at best a Hollywood movie. When Alfred checks out "The Once and Future King" from the library, he can't get through it. T. H. White's classic Arthurian novel may be slow going for kids who don't like to read, but "The Lightning Thief" and the Arthurian legends themselves are proof that a story can have plenty of action without sacrificing depth.

Polly Shulman's young adult novel, "Enthusiasm," will be published next year.